ave often wondered that the _technique_ of art should have so
meagre a literature. Its philosophy and poetry have employed many
pens, and been exhaustively analyzed, but this has been mostly the
work of outsiders--of critics devoid even of the qualification laid
down by Disraeli of having failed in the practical exploitation of the
field they discuss, but for all that often powerful critics. Artists
have rarely been able to paint their pictures in black and white
and run them through the press. They cannot so display the infinite
gradations that grow upon their canvas, nor trace in words the subtle
principles which have presided at the birth of their works and of
every part of them. General rules they can lay down, as poets can the
elements of their own trade; but these rules are at the command of the
veriest daub or rhymester; the manifold development of them to results
almost divine remaining, even to those who achieve it in either walk,
evasive and untraceable. The masters of verse and art have mapped
out for us none of their secrets. The deductions we make from their
practice are our deductions, not theirs. Raffaelle, if questioned,
could only point to his palette spread with the common colors, and
Homer had not even pen and ink. Our versifiers are provided with
admirable paper and gold pens, and our artists, young and old, with
the colors Elliott once told an inquirer he made his marvellous
flesh-tints with--red, blue and yellow.

Adventures of a Consul Abroad. By Luigi Monti. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

This is a didactic or illustrative story, with a moral we find thus
laid down on the last page: "Our government sends men abroad who,
after hard labor and long experience, learn a complicated, delicate
and responsible profession; and no sooner have they learned it, and
are able to perform creditably to themselves and the government
they represent all its intricate duties, than they are recalled and
replaced by inexperienced men, who have to go through the same ordeal,
and never stay long enough to be of real service to their country."

The gentleman upon whose shadowy shoulders is placed the heavy task of
pointing this dictum is Samuel Sampleton, Esq., teacher of a private
seminary on Cape Cod, who gets tired of the young idea and seeks more
profitable and expanded fields of labor. He has not, at the outset,
the slightest preparation for the duties of the position--that of
United States consul at Verdecuerno (a tra